This is an extraordinary piece of television. It is, almost without fail, pitch perfect. It acknowledges the gravity of the moment while keeping a healthy sense of perspective. As he himself points out, the fate of a talk show is trivial compared to many other things going on, but the issues it raises are not trivial at all.
For those of us who are way too into the history of the medium, the monologue opens with a 65-year-old callback to perhaps the first talk show censorship scandal.
As Josh Marshall and many others have pointed out, possibly the worst outcome for Sinclair is having its viewers learn more about who owns their local stations. A few years ago, John Oliver did an excellent segment on Sinclair that has only become more relevant.
I particularly liked the way around 1:20 Oliver followed up his teasing of local news by acknowledging that local television journalists often do extraordinary work, and have, to some degree, stepped up to fill the void left by the decline of newspapers.
Finally, just to end on a less infuriating note, here is a very cool story about the making of The Princess Bride.
“The Princess Bride” turns 38 today. Here’s a great tale about Andre the Giant — as told by Mandy Patinkin.
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 7:27 AM
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Mark:
ReplyDeleteI think the whole "He was pitch-perfect" thing misses the point. I'm reminded of the Harris campaign, which was framed as a sequence of tests where she had to behave perfectly at each step: perfect transition from Biden to Harris campaign, perfect convention speech, perfect debate, etc. If you've gotta be perfect at every point, if any misstep is potentially fatal, you've already lost.
I don't literally mean that she already lost in the sense that she never had a chance of winning. The election was close and could've gone either way. I just mean that Harris lost in the discourse in the sense that, even when she was being praised, it was for not making any missteps, with the understanding that that was absolutely required of her, to never mess up.
Andrew
Andrew,
DeleteJust to be clear, I said it was a great half hour of television—and it was—but it didn’t have to be. Jimmy Kimmel could have filled the time with old Carson material about the weirdos outside the theater on Hollywood Boulevard and it wouldn’t have made that much difference. The moment ABC announced he was coming back (without any concessions, as far as we can tell), this was going to be a victory lap.
What’s more, it represented a complete reversal of fortunes for all parties involved from just four days earlier. Go back to the previous Friday: Trump and the rest of the administration were openly gloating and talking about who they were going to get fired next. Sinclair was openly dancing on the grave. ABC had surrendered unconditionally.
By Monday, everything was different. Over the course of the weekend, the public outcry had been tremendous. Big-name talent was promising never to work with the studio again. Stars of both the Star Wars and Marvel franchises were attacking the company. So many people were canceling their Disney+ memberships that the website kept going down. Michael freaking Eisner called the management cowards.
Kimmel’s exceptional performance may have sped up the complete capitulation of Sinclair and Nexstar less than 72 hours after his broadcast, but I am convinced it was an economic decision. The moment ABC blinked, the outcome was inevitable and so obvious that even the far-right people behind Sinclair knew it was time to cut their losses.
Maybe I’m missing a couple of obvious precedents, but we’ve seen plenty of companies fold under pressure from the administration, and we’ve seen a few stand up. I can’t think of a case anywhere close to this magnitude where a company caved and then was forced to reverse itself based on the reaction of its customers.
If businesses start seeing comparable or greater risks to the bottom line associated with supporting Trump versus standing up to him, the fiduciary calculus gets way more interesting.
Mark